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Dear NCSY GIVE Parents,
What an incredible week!
Our shabbos together in Mevaseret was just what we needed: laid back, relaxing and unifying. From random seating at shabbos dinner to a hilarious ice breaker, girls who hadn't had the chance to meet yet were getting to know one another. We then enjoyed an evening of pizza and bowling on motzai shabbos, and obviously the advisors were all decked out in crazy costumes to make the evening even more fun!
The next day, Sunday, was the 17th of Tammuz. Our day began with a special program arranged by one of our GIVE madrichot, Daphna Weingarten, as part of a bigger NCSY Summer project. Every camper on an NCSY Summer program has been given the name of an active Israeli soldier to daven for their safety and wellbeing. To introduce the program, Daphna arranged for former NCSY GIVEr/GIVE advisor Aviyah (Rosenwasser) Atkin, her husband, Yonatan, and another soldier to come and address the girls, speaking about life in Israel from the vantage point of serving in the army/being married to a soldier. They spoke about how Yonatan was in the army, unreachable, for a large portion of their engagement and how he was lucky enough to get last minute permission to have time off for their wedding and sheva brachos. He then told the story of his sister-in-law signing up to daven for the safety of a solider, and out of all of the soldiers in the system, she was given Yonatan's name. It was a very powerful message for the girls that when we daven for someone we don't know, they could in fact be our brother and we should think of them like that. After the program, we heard from renowned speaker Neil Lazarus, visited Yad VaShem and then traveled to the Kotel for mincha. We broke our fast with many members of the National NCSY Staff and had the opportunity to thank David Cutler in person for all the hard work he puts in to making our summer so fantastic.
Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were a new experience for NCSY GIVE. We travelled down south to Kibbutz Alumim to live the life of a kibbutznik by working the land, eating in the communal dining room and so much more. Despite it being insanely hot there, the girls LOVED it! Upon return to Mevaseret, we had a delicious dinner and then played a very messy game of See, Run, Paint. It was awesome!
We woke up early Thursday morning and headed to everyones favorite tourist attraction... Massada! From there we floated on over to the Dead Sea and then travelled to Ein Gedi for some fun in the sun! We ended off the day by saying "so-long" to everyone as we each went our separate ways for the free weekend. Though we're all excited to see our family and friends, we'll definitely miss being together as a GIVE family.
Can't wait to reunite on Sunday and hear about everyones adventures over shabbos!
Wishing you and yours a beautiful shabbos,
Erin and the NCSY GIVE family
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